The Medium is finally available worldwide, but it could’ve been a very different experience from what we got in the final product.
I had a chance to interview Jacek Zieba, producer, and Wojciech Piejko, lead designer about the game.
You probably didn’t know this, but Bloober sent out teasers for the game in 2012 for the Nintendo Wii U, though that game never released.
Intrigued, I asked the duo what that game was back then and how it evolved into the game we have today.
Jacek: The game idea started more as a platformer and those were different times, the company was in a different state, and we weren’t so experienced.
Wojciech: Yeah, and it featured a male protagonist with a red amulet, and he was charging the red amulet to fight some evil spirits in the spirit world. So we basically changed almost everything.
Jacek: Yeah, we also say that the tech had evolved since then and the story elements also evolved because of that. When we started working on it again, we knew we wanted it to be a game about different POVs, we wanted it to be based in Poland, we want it to comment on communist Poland, for the spirit world to be inspired by Zdzislaw Beksinski’s paintings. So the tech evolved and the story evolved.
Wojciech: We grew as a team at Bloober – our vision of the game, our ability to create and write better stories, etc. It wasn’t bad back then, but it was a different time and we wanted to do different things. As we said before, the idea came from the crazy minds of [Bloober Team CEO] Piotr Babieno and his wife. It was iterated from a platformer to a 3D game. After we finished “The Observer,” Jacek and I got the project from our boss who said “What can we do to deliver this game?” So we changed it to fixed-camera and re-designed the game.
It’s interesting to think that we could’ve had a platformer instead, given that Bloober is now more or less known for their penchant for horror.
While I like the idea they had, I think the story of Marianne that they went with in the final product was the right choice.
The Medium is available now, worldwide, for PC and Xbox Series S|X. It’s available for Game Pass subscribers too.
You can check out my final review for the game HERE.
